Hidden Heirs and Fallen Crowns (Complete)

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“I think it’s time I went to your house,” I told Jasmine. A few weeks had passed since the bus accident, and Jasmine and Zed were settling in very well. Jasmine had made her mark with her Karate skills and Zed, as it turned out, had been doing boxing five hours a week for seven years. I was the only one that was likely to die if I met Tony and the Cockroaches one dark night, but when I mentioned that to Zed, he just laughed.

“I’ll be your bodyguard, if you like,” he had told me. I had decided to take that as a joke.

Jasmine had got over her uneasiness with Zed, which had lasted more than two weeks. I still didn’t know why she’d felt so uneasy about him, but I hadn’t asked.

She looked up from the notes she was writing. “Sure, I’d love that!” she said. “You and Zed should definitely come over some time. When are you free?”

“All week round - I don’t really do much after school.”

“Same. We’ll ask Zed, then,” she suggested.

He was at the board, answering a question that countless other people had tried and failed to answer. I was confident that he was able to. He was the class nerd, but in a good way. No one teased him, not even Melanie and Tony. I envied him for it; I had been beaten to a pulp every time I had so much as answered more than two questions a day.

 I saw him frown, then suddenly smile and write the answer.

“Correct!” clapped Mrs Copper. Everyone else clapped, most of them looking unusually sulky. That was a maths question that I doubt even Mrs Copper herself could have answered in that amount of time. Zed sat back down next to me.

“Zed?”

“Yeah?”

“Er, I was thinking, what days of the week are you free?” As soon as I said I realised what it sounded like, and blushed. “Er, I mean, Jasmine invited us to her house and she was wondering what days of the week you were free …”

“Hmm … Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday – I’ve got boxing the rest of the week. Why?”

“Well, Jasmine invited us to her house, and she just needs to know when we’re free. I’m free all week, and so is she, so now we just need to know when you are.”

He smiled. “An invitation? Me?” He made a show of considering all the options he had. I waited impatiently. “Well …” he said after a few moments.

I raised an eyebrow. “If you can’t decide, we’ll simply have to go without you …”

“Fine,” he answered quickly. “Wednesday.”

***

We decided to walk to Jasmine’s house. I didn’t mind, seeing as I got to gawk at a whole street of mansions. I could hardly breathe when Jasmine had told me that this was where she lived.

There was mansion after mansion after mansion. Some had marble steps leading up to a front door the width of a car and the height of two average doors. I don’t know how people manage to open them without breaking their backs.

“Those houses have got automatic front doors,” Jasmine told me as I stared, open-mouthed, at a young couple opening the door with seemingly no effort at all.

“Oh.” I blushed. Why hadn’t I thought of that myself? But I didn’t have much time to feel embarrassed before I saw another house with the bottom floor walls made out of glass.

We came across another mansion with a swimming pool in the shape of a crescent moon. It was so large that I couldn’t help thinking that it was as if someone had just plucked the moon out of the sky and planted it outside their mansion.